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T. DeWitt Talmadge was a Baptist Minister who was both an evangelist and a newspaper columnist, syndicated in more than 3,500 newspapers. Brann's previous editorials in other papers had prompted Talmadge to devote an entire newspaper column to condemning Brann as the "Apostle of the Devil." For one reason or another, Talmadge and the publisher of the Tyler Telegram got crossways, and the Telegram blasted Talmadge in an editorial. For reasons not clear, the Telegram shortly withdrew the remarks in an apologetic editorial. This infuriated Brann, who rolled out the Iconoclast's cannons and opened fire.

"The Tyler Telegram humbly apologizes for having called that wide-lipped blatherskite, T. DeWitt Talmadge, 'a religious faker.' Next thing we know our Tyler contemporary will apologize for having inadvertently hazarded the statement that water is wet. When a daily newspaper tells the truth, even by accident, it should stick to it instead of crawling on its belly in the dust to humbly ask pardon of the Devil. The Iconoclast will pay any man $10 who will demonstrate that T. DeWitt Talmadge ever originated an idea, good, bad, or indifferent. He is simply a monstrous bag of fetid wind. The man who can find intellectual food in Talmadge's sermons could acquire a case of delirium tremens by drinking the froth out of a pop bottle."